7 comments:

Fuck Mickey Rourke. The same kind of people who think Mickey Rourke should have won the Oscar are the same kind of people who think Lynn Cullen should be back on local radio. They don’t look at the body of work, they look at the sensationalism. I, personally, think John McIntire needs to be back on local radio. McIntire is the Sean Penn of Pittsburgh. He works his mother-freaking fingers to the bone on every project that he does and he brings our little city the provocative edge that it needs. So what if sometimes he seems like an asstard? Who doesn’t? All I’m saying is… Mickey Rourke did not deserve to win. Sean Penn did. Word.

An astute reader e-mailed this comment in to me. He wants it posted anonymously:=====Let's look at this speech from its standpoint in political economy. What was it intended to accomplish? I would suggest that he wants to lay out his agenda -- really, re-introduce it to the audience, refreshing the citizenry on his his plan.

Why would he bother to do this? I suspect that the near-unanimity with which the Republicans rejected his stimulus package, and the accompanying rhetoric, reminiscent of the early, sorry days of the Clinton health care initiative, is at play here.

Obama has very vividly, almost theatrically, reached out to the Republicans and talked bipartisanship. In short, he has positioned himself as the aggrieved party -- the aggrieved champion, in fact -- in any forthcoming political rumble. The Republicans are miscalculating this one because they figure that what worked on Clinton, the Great Triangulator, will work on Obama. Clinton is from Arkansas. Obama is from Chicago. Clinton was constantly compromising. Obama first got into office by knocking his opponents off the ballot, Chicago style.I suspect that this speech presages one hell of a rumble if the GOP leadership doesn't bend slightly. He did not bring Rahm Emanuel into the administration to add some heretofore undiscovered quirky charm. He brought him to enforce, and I suspect that Obama's patience is running out. He laid out the major budget items he seeks, as well as health care reform.

In a lot of ways, I think we're about to see the original Clinton plan with knuckles.=====